A variety of disabilities necessitates specialized seating for handicapped persons wherein the person, and particularly his torso, must be securely yet comfortably held in a predetermined position. The general orientation of the person varies with different illnesses. For example, persons with muscular dystrophy may have to be held in an exaggerated lumbar lordosis position, persons with cerebral palsy may have to be held with their shoulders and back rounded forward and their head directly over their shoulders, while quadriplegic persons may have to be held with their back and head extending in a straight line but at an extreme rearward incline. Close support of the person's trunk, not only at the front and back but on either side, requires that the seat be formed to accommodate persons of various widths at different parts of their body. Heretofore, the seats available to persons were either of moderate cost with no or poor fitting capability, or well-fitting but individually hand shaped and of a very high cost. Seats available at moderate prices have utilized primarily flat or gently curved surfaces that could accommodate all persons but none of them comfortably or closely. Some seats have provided cushions mounted on movable supports with many degrees of freedom, but such supports tended to loosen, and the cushions could not adequately fit a wide area of persons of different shapes. No existing seats allow for the body to be rounded or for proper contouring of patients with hip and spinal obliquities (non-symmetrical growth). Custom seats were available, which were individually cut to fit or were molded to the person by using a hardenable molding compound and molding one or a few cushion sections to the person such as by casting around him. Such custom seats require considerable time of the person and of skilled technicians, resulting in a high cost. Such custom molded seats have been especially expensive when utilized for children, whose dimensions greatly change perhaps after periods of less than a year, as they grow, requiring a new customized seat.
A seating system which could adjust to and hold a patient in any of a variety of general position orientations, and which also could comfortably but securely hold a patient in a particular position within that orientation, which could be quickly fitted to a patient utilizing off-the-shelf parts, and which could be refitted at moderately low cost to growing children, would have considerable benefit to handicapped persons.